looks into the third.
“Which is Evremonde?” says a man behind him.
“That. At the back there.”
“With his hand in the girl’s?”
“Yes.”
The man cries, “Down, Evremonde! To the Guillotine all
aristocrats! Down, Evremonde!”
“Hush, hush!” the Spy entreats him, timidly.
“And why not, citizen?”
“He is going to pay the forfeit: it will be paid in five minutes
more. Let him be at peace.”
But the man continuing to exclaim, “Down, Evremonde!” the
face of Evremonde is for a moment turned towards him.
Evremonde then sees the Spy, and looks attentively at him, and
goes his way.
The clocks are on the stroke of three, and the furrow ploughed
among the populace is turning round, to come on into the place of
execution, and end. The ridges thrown to this side and to that, now
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
A Tale of Two Cities
crumble in and close behind the last plough as it passes on, for all
are following to the Guillotine. In front of it, seated in chairs, as in
a garden of public diversion, are a number of women, busily
knitting. On one of the foremost chairs, stands The Vengeance,
looking about for her friend.
“Therese!” she cries, in her shrill tones. “Who has seen her?
Therese Defarge!”
“She never missed before,” says a knitting-woman of the
sisterhood.
“No; nor will she miss now,” cries The Vengeance petulantly.
“Therese.”
“Louder,” the woman recommends.
Ay! Louder, Vengeance, much louder, and still she will scarcely
hear thee. Louder yet, Vengeance, with a little oath or so added,
and yet it will hardly bring her. Send other women up and down to
seek her, lingering somewhere; and yet, although the messengers
have done dread deeds, it is questionable whether of their own
wills they will go far enough to find her!
“Bad Fortune!” cries The Vengeance, stamping her foot in the
chair, “and here are the tumbrils! And Evremonde will be
dispatched in a wink, and she not here! See her knitting in my
hand, and her empty chair ready for her. I cry with vexation and
disappointment!”
As The Vengeance descends from her elevation to do it, the
tumbrils begin to discharge their loads. The ministers of Sainte
Guillotine are robed and ready. Crash!—a head is held up, and the
knitting-women, who scarcely lifted their eyes to look at it a
moment ago when it could think and speak, count One.
The second tumbril empties and moves on; the third comes up.
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
A Tale of Two Cities
Crash!—And the knitting-women, never faltering or pausing in
their work, count Two.
The supposed Evremonde descends, and the seamstress is
lifted out next after him. He has not relinquished her patient hand
in getting out, but still holds it as he promised. He gently places
her with her back to the crashing engine that constantly whirrs up
and falls, and she looks into his face and thanks him.
“But for you, dear stranger, I should not be so composed, for I
am naturally a poor little thing, faint of heart; nor should I have
been able to raise my thoughts to Him who was put to death, that
we might have hope and comfort here today. I think you were sent
to me by Heaven.”
“Or you to me,” says Sydney Carton. “Keep your eyes upon me,
dear child, and mind no other object.”
“I mind nothing while I hold your hand. I shall mind nothing
when I let it go, if they are rapid.”
“They will be rapid. Fear not!”
The two stand in the fast-thinning throng of victims, but they
speak as if they were alone. Eye to eye, voice to voice, hand to
hand, heart to heart, these two children of the Universal Mother,
else so wide apart and differing, have come together on the dark
highway, to repair home together, and to rest in her bosom.
“Brave and generous friend, will you let me ask you one last
question? I am very ignorant, and it troubles me—just a little.”
“Tell me what it is.”
“I have a cousin, an only relative and an orphan, like myself,
whom I love very dearly. She is five years younger than I, and she
lives in a farmer’s house in the south country. Poverty parted us,
and she knows nothing of my fate—for I cannot write—and if I
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
A Tale of Two Cities
could, how should I tell her! It is better as it is.”
“Yes, yes, better as it is.”
“What I have been thinking as we came along, and what I am
still thinking now, as I look into your kind strong face which gives
me so much support, is this:—If the Republic really does good to
the poor, and they come to be less hungry, and in all ways to suffer
less, she may live a long time: she may even live to be old.”
“What then, my gentle sister?”
“Do you think”; the uncomplaining eyes in which there is so
much endurance, fill with tears, and the lips part a little more and
tremble: “that it will seem long to me, while I wait for her in the
better land where I trust both you and I will be mercifully
sheltered?”
“It cannot be, my child; there is no Time there, and no trouble
there.”
“You comfort me so much! I am so ignorant. Am I to kiss you
now? Is the moment come?”
“Yes.”
She kisses his lips; he kisses hers; they solemnly bless each
other. The spare hand does not tremble as he releases it; nothing
worse than a sweet, bright constancy is in the patient face. She
goes next before him—is gone; the knitting-women count Twenty-
Two.
“I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that
believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and
whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die!”
The murmuring of many voices, the upturning of many faces,
the pressing on of many footsteps in the outskirts of the crowd, so
that it swells forward in a mass, like one great heave of water, all
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A Tale of Two Cities
flashes away. Twenty-Three.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
They said of him, about the city that night, that it was the
peacefullest man’s face ever beheld there. Many added that he
looked sublime and prophetic.
One of the most remarkable sufferers by the same axe—a
woman—had asked at the foot of the same scaffold, not long
before, to be allowed to write down the thoughts that were
inspiring her. If he had given any utterance to his, and they were
prophetic, they would have been these:
“I see Barsad, and Cly, Defarge, The Vengeance, the Jurymen,
the Judge, long ranks of the new oppressors who have risen on the
destruction of the old, perishing by this retributive instrument,
before it shall cease out of its present use. I see a beautiful city and
a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to
be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long, long
years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of
which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for
itself and wearing out.
“I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful,
prosperous and happy, in that England which I shall see no more.
I see Her with a child upon her bosom, who bears my name. I see
her father, aged and bent, but otherwise restored, and faithful to
all men in his healing office, and at peace; I see the good old man,
so long their friend, in ten years’ time enriching them with all he
has, and passing tranquilly to his reward.
“I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
A Tale of Two Cities
of their descendants, generations hence. I see her, an old woman,
weeping for me on the anniversary of this day. I see her and her
husband, their course done, lying side by side in their last earthly
bed, and I know that each was not more honoured and held sacred
in the other’s soul, than I was in the souls of both.
“I see that child who lay upon her bosom and who bore my
name, a man winning his way up in that path of life which once
was mine. I see him winning it so well, that my name is made
illustrious there by the light of his. I see the blots I threw upon it,
faded away. I see him, foremost of just judges and honoured men,
bringing a boy of my name, with a forehead that I know and
golden hair, to this place—then fair to look upon, with not a trace
of this day’s disfigurement—and I hear him tell the child my story,
with a tender and a faltering voice.
“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is
a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.”
The End
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
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